


Swipe Right

by Masu_Trout



Category: SCP Foundation
Genre: F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Interspecies Romance, Light Angst, Online Dating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 03:56:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13138578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masu_Trout/pseuds/Masu_Trout
Summary: Inter-dimensional dating has its problems, but people trying to murder her girlfriend shouldn't have been one of them.





	Swipe Right

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kandrona](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kandrona/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! I read the SCP report you mentioned for the first time thanks to your letter, and immediately fell so much in love that I knew I had to try my hand at writing something for it. I hope you enjoy the result!

19 Cic. 30155, 01:34  
**01001100010011110100111001000101 said:** _I enjoyed meeting you._  
**01001100010011110100111001000101 said:** _If you'd like to talk again sometime…_

22 Cic. 30155, 27:92  
**01001100010011110100111001000101 said:** _I went looking for the book you mentioned during our meeting, but there's no file on record with a title like that._  
**01001100010011110100111001000101 said:** _I think perhaps it might not exist in this dimension._  
**01001100010011110100111001000101 said:** _Perhaps you could send me a copy?_  
**01001100010011110100111001000101 said:** _If you have books on file where you are._  
**01001100010011110100111001000101 said:** _I mean_  
**01001100010011110100111001000101 said:** _I'm not saying that you don't_  
**01001100010011110100111001000101 said:** _I'm sure your culture is very advanced_  
**01001100010011110100111001000101 said:** _I just_  
**01001100010011110100111001000101 said:** _Never mind._  
**01001100010011110100111001000101 said:** _I'm sorry._

28 Cic. 30155, 14:09  
**01001100010011110100111001000101 said:** _The sky is beautiful here tonight._  
**01001100010011110100111001000101 said:** _I wish that I could show you._

05 Cor. 30155, 19:31  
**01001100010011110100111001000101 said:** _Hey I_  
**01001100010011110100111001000101 said:** _I don't know what to say_

14 Cor. 30155, 12:22  
**01001100010011110100111001000101 said:** _I'm sorry._  
**01001100010011110100111001000101 said:** _I won't keep bothering you, I promise._  
**01001100010011110100111001000101 said:** _I just wanted to tell you that, if I said anything rude to you during our meeting, that I would like to apologize._  
**01001100010011110100111001000101 said:** _And that I feel my emotions have made more genuine by thinking of you_  
**01001100010011110100111001000101 said:** _so_  
**01001100010011110100111001000101 said:** _thank you_

23 Cor. 30155, 04:85  
**lookingabove said:** _please_  
**lookingabove said:** _i want to see u_  
**lookingabove said:** _send me a meet request_

It was the last week of Corecember, height of the of the Crawlers' Week celebrations, and unit 37-LONE had no time for anything but work. There were security patrols to route, vendors to restock, parades to organize, suspected insurgents to quietly remove from the festivities spilling out across the streets. This was her chance to prove that she was worthy of the emotions her superiors had seen fit to grant her. (To prove that those emotions were _real_.) There was no time for pining or idle chat, not when the only things she ought to be feeling were the stress of high expectations and pride in a job well done.

When the message flashed across her optics, she didn't hesitate. She mashed the meet button with such force that for a moment she thought a processor in her cranium might have given out.

No matter, anyway. Last time it had taken almost four days for the acceptance of the meet request to go through, and another two for the manifestation to occur. The festival would be long over by the time—

The site let out a cheerful _ping!_ , letting her know the meet request had been confirmed mutual. 27.35 seconds later, staticky tendrils of pure energy begin to coalesce into a vaguely-familiar shape.

Oh no. Absolutely not. This couldn't be happening.

There was so much going on, so much to do. She didn't have time for this.

She was so _happy_.

Her date appeared in a burst of gray fuzz, rough static turning to brown skin and black hair and a red-and-white-patterned uniform. Different than the pure white she'd worn last time they met. Perhaps she'd been given a promotion?

Or, 37-LONE realized with a sinking sense of horror, perhaps the new color wasn't coming from the outfit. The human—lookingabove in the chat, Dana in person—was clutching her side. The red had a sort of tacky texture to it that, in 37-LONE's experience, normally belonged to oils and coolants and other sorts of things that spelled disaster if they were permitted to leak.

“Dana,” she said, “are you all right?”

“Mmm,” Dana hissed, her—wonderfully expressive, and my didn't she feel terrible for noticing that now—face contorting sheer agony. “I've… been better.”

67.4 seconds until the next patrol needed to be sent out. She could manage this. 37-LONE stepped away from the controls and reached Dana's side just in time to catch her as she collapsed.

“Oh! Um, are you…” She pressed a hand to Dana's forehead. Uneven breathing, racing heart, a sheen of sweat collecting on her forehead; 37-LONE wasn't high-ranking enough to be allowed around organic beings in her daily life, but if the serials were the least bit accurate then all of this was the sign of a badly injured human. 

This wasn't how their second date was supposed to go. She was going to be charming, well-spoken. She would say the right things this time. She'd feel all the right emotions at all the right moments, so that even someone as astounding as Dana couldn't help but become interested in a low-ranking synthetic like her. 

Seeing Dana in pain made something deep inside her ache. It felt like a malfunction of a part she couldn't name.

“Please,” she said, “tell me what I can do.”

Carefully, Dana guided her through the steps of tending to a human. 37-LONE cut the torn white-and-red (bloodied, Dana helpfully supplied) cloth away from her skin, then found the source of the leak: a patch of skin on her torso had been sliced open and was oozing that slick red liquid. Fixing it turned out to be surprisingly terrifying—no spare parts on an organic, which meant that 37-LONE had to find a spool of flex-wire and a small metal shard to guide it through—but Dana was patient and calm for someone in so much pain, and she never once complained when 37-LONE had to dart back to her station and approve another patrol or plan an alternate parade route on the fly.

Pure chaos. Terrifying, indescribable. But Dana was here ( _here!_ ), which meant it was still somehow the best she'd felt since the day she was granted emotions.

Finally, forty-five minutes and seven seconds later, 37-LONE was able to finish the final stitches on the wound. For a moment after the two of them just sat there: Dana breathing heavily, her chest rising and falling with each lungful, and 37-LONE biting down on the urge to apologize for all of the missteps she'd surely made in the last three-quarters of an hour.

(Would it be better to ask if she'd offended, or just to apologize outright? She didn't want to be presumptuous, but neither did she want to sound arrogant. There was no question that she'd said _something_ wrong—if anyone could manage to be horrifically insensitive in only three sentences, it was her—but acting so familiar might only make the insult worse.)

“Thanks,” Dana said, startling 37-LONE out of her panicked looping thoughts. 

“I—you're welcome?”

Dana smiled. Her teeth were so very white. Even like this, tired and wounded with her eyes half-closed, she seemed perfectly poised. “For the stitches. They're really even. Better than I could do.”

“Oh. Of course.” 37-LONE very nearly overheated from sheer embarrassed delight. She had no idea how one was supposed to respond to having their work complimented. Probably Dana could hear her fans whirring from here. “Is everything okay?”

“Hm?”

“You're hurt.” She motioned to the wound. “Your… Foundation, yes? That's the word? Has awful something happened there?”

Dana snorted out a laugh. “I wish. No, this is pretty much how it goes. Touch a giant scorpion, stare at a fucked-up concrete statue, wander down a creepy basement… I'm just lucky I lasted as long as I did.” She ran a hand over the line of stitches. “Probably won't make it much longer, though.”

37-LONE fought back a noise of distress. “What do you mean? Did I do something wrong?”

“Shit, no, nothing like that,” Dana said, suddenly alert. “It's not your fault. I got stupid, is all.”

She shouldn't prod. The hurt in Dana's voice was obvious. But—“What happened?” she asked, willing herself to shut up even as the words spilled out. Ripping out her vocal processors was sounding more and more appealing by the second. 

For a long moment, Dana was silent. 37-LONE was just about ready to apologize when she sighed and said, “I thought I was dying. Maybe I was? Who knows. I'm sure the doctor there was skilled enough to stitch me up, but for all I know they could've wanted to study what happens when you bleed out after getting bitten by a three-headed dog.” She shrugged. "I got to mess that one up for them, at least. Always a plus."

Surely they wouldn't. Surely _no one_ would. Synthetics were one thing—cheap, disposable, replaceable—but using organics in such a way was unthinkable.

(And, underneath the first horror, a greater one: _Dana_ was worth more than that. How dare anyone think they could simply allow someone like her to die. Had they never seen how she looked when she smiled?)

“But,” 37-LONE said quietly, “you're better now, right? So they'll have no reason to let you die.”

Dana winced. “I, ah… _may_ have stolen a researcher's phone. They don't take too kindly to theft.”

37-LONE clenched her hands into fists, feeling the plastic creak under the strain of her own tight grip. There had to be something she could do. “Why'd you do that?”

“I thought I was going to die,” Dana repeated. Then, helplessly, she laughed, shoulders shaking first with humor and then with pain as the movement of her body pulled the stitches. “I used it to log on one last time. I didn't want to go yet. Not without seeing you again.” 

“Oh,” 37-LONE said. 

She had no lips. No facial definition at all, really. Her skin was slick and cold, the furthest thing from comforting. 

It didn't matter. Right now, none of it mattered. There wasn't a being on this planet that could have stopped her from pressing up against Dana's side and giving her very best attempt at a kiss. Luckily, Dana seemed to understand—after a half-second of frozen awkwardness, her lips parted opened and she pressed a warm kiss against the spot on 37-LONE's face where an organic might have a mouth. Her arms went up and around 37-LONE, drawing her in, and then they were wrapped around each other with their hands pressed tight and their bodies close enough to feel each other's slightest movements. 

Eventually, 37-LONE realized that Dana was crying. Quiet, soft hitches in her breathing, nothing like the great theatrical sobs the organics on the serials managed.

“I'm sorry,” she was saying quietly, “I'm sorry, I'm so so sorry…”

It was the worst thing 37-LONE had ever heard. No one like Dana ever ought to apologize, to her or to anyone else. 

She'd fix this. Somehow, she'd manage it—whether that meant keeping her here or following Dana back to her world or charting course for some new universe entirely. 

(No. More than that. She wouldn't just run after her. She'd kill for her. An organic, a mob of organics, the whole entire Foundation—it was all the same to her now. They deserved to die if they thought they could treat Dana as some _thing_ to be used and thrown away.)

“Don't,” 37-LONE said, trying to keep her voice steady. “Not to me. I'm so glad you came.”

The sniffling stopped for a moment. Started again, quieter. Stopped again. Finally, Dana pulled away to rub at her face and then just as quickly buried her face back into the smooth plastic of 37-LONE's body. She smiled into the crook of her neck. 

“Thanks.” Dana sounded raspy, but at least the tears seemed to have slowed. “Sorry I interrupted your job.”

37-LONE shook her head. “I'm just… happy you're here. Truly.” If ever an emotion was real, it had to be this one. Dana made her feel as though she'd always known what _feeling_ meant. “I have another five-and-a-quarter minutes before my next shift starts, actually—would you like to see outside, maybe? The sky's always a lovely shade of pitch during Crawlers' Week."

“Yeah,” Dana said, “I'd like that very much.”

37-LONE reached down and entwined Dana's finers with hers, luxuriating in the warmth and the steady pulse she could feel there.

A meet request lasted six hours. That meant just over five hours before Dana had to go back. She'd think of something. If there was one thing synthetics understood, it was creative problem-solving.

37-LONE squeezed Dana's hand and thought, _Don't worry._


End file.
